Woman in Profile

Mino da Fiesole was a brilliant marble carver, creating tombs and portraits for leading citizens of Florence and Rome. His portrait bust of Piero de’ Medici of 1453–54 initiated the revival of an ancient Roman type of portraiture, the marble bust. He also carved marble portrait reliefs and reliefs representing Roman emperors. The sculpture in the Gardner Museum displays aspects of both forms – the sharp profile combined with the strongly projecting left shoulder, which breaks the boundary of the relief plane and evokes a three-dimensional bust. The relief presents a woman dressed in a simple robe that is tied in the front and back into bows. Her hair is tightly braided at the back, but loose, unruly curls fall from a knot at the top of her head. The profile is sharply undercut and traces the slight curve of her nose, her soft double-chin, and her long, columnar neck. She is splendid (as Berenson says) and powerful, her chin slightly raised and her gaze direct and steady. Yet these very qualities – her power and splendor – argue against this being a portrait of a particular Florentine woman. She wears no jewels and her dress is not rich brocade, but simple and plain. She has more in common with Mino da Fiesole’s reliefs of Roman emperors than with the elegantly bedecked and bejeweled female sitters typical of Florentine portraits of the fifteenth century. She may instead represent an ancient Roman heroine or empress, a model of virtue for the contemporary Florentine woman rather than a portrait of an individual.

When Bernard Berenson wrote to Isabella Stewart Gardner to recommend this relief, he believed it represented a member of the Antinori family, since the relief came from the Palazzo Antinori-Aldobrandini in Florence.